Rev81: CHANGE: Sect. 11.1 Basic Authentication
Dave Kristol (dmk@allegra.att.com)
Fri, 31 May 96 12:39:51 EDT
David Morris, dwmorris@netcom.com, asked Jim Gettys:
> The question for the experts is: Is there some
> protocol reason that userid shouldn't be redefined as
> *(TEXTnotCOLON)?
>
> If need be, I or my crew could survey a few more browsers to build the
> case for current practice. I'll be happy to post a proposed edit to the
> list if there isn't an obvious reason to not make the change.
I can't think of a *protocol* reason. Furthermore, I suspect any
robust server is indifferent to what characters precede ':' (including
CTLs!). That's certainly true of my server and, I think, NCSA and
Apache.
So the question is, what do clients do? I would welcome David's survey
of current practice before endorsing the change, but I think it's a
reasonable one.
Meanwhile, I offer the following change proposal:
Change:
userid = [ token ]
To:
userid = *TEXTnocolon
TEXTnocolon = <any OCTET except CTLs and ":",
but including LWS>
Dave Kristol